Transcript

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Definition of Pre-hospital Care• Is the phase of care necessary to get a patient from the point of injury or illness to the place of definitive treatment• Increasingly important in many parts of the world secondary to epidemiologic transition (Sikka and Margolis 2005). 2

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Introduction• As the economy progresses health network improves and people tend to live longer• As people are moving out into cities, this in turn, leads to a higher crime rate, more cases of motor vehicle and other traumatic injuries, and thus a greater need for pre-hospital care services. 3

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Rapid Urbanisation• Rapid urbanisation occurs with increasing number of people shifting out to larger cities.• Kuala Lumpur – current population density of 7,089 per square km• Penang – 1,524 per sd km• Interior places of the state of Sarawak such as Belaga – 2 per sq km• Kapit – 4 per sq km (Department of Statistics Malaysia, June 2011) 4

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Life Expectancy of Malaysians• Male 71.5 years (2006)  71.7 years (2010)• female 76.3 years (2006)  76.6 years (2010)• The percentage of people aged 65 years old and above has increased from 4.0% (2000) to 4.7% (2010)• (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2011). 5

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Changes in Disease Patterns• As people lives longer, disease pattern changes, and this results in an increase of the number of cardiovascular-related disease cases.• In 2009, – CVD is the number one (16.1%) cause of death, – Accidents-related injuries are the 7th (4.9%) cause of death (Ministry of Health Malaysia, 2011).• The chance of survival in these cardiovascular diseases is often influenced by time-dependent interventions. 6

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Example of Time Dependent Interventions:Door-to-Needle Time for STEMI• Example: a patient with acute STEMI requires initiation of thrombolytic therapy with the “door-to- needle” time within 30 minutes (Antman et al, 2004)• In reality, the mean “door-to-needle” time shown in a recent local study in Malaysia was about 105 minutes! (Lee et al, 2008). 7

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Example of Time Dependent Interventions:Cardiac Arrest• The chance of survival is dependent upon the prompt initiation of chest compression (Sasson et al, 2010).• By directly compressing the heart, an adequate intrathoracic pressure is created in order to squeeze the blood out from the cardiac chamber to perfuse the vital organs including the myocardium and the brain (Berg et al, 2010). 8

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Example of Time Dependent Interventions:Cardiac Arrest• Unfortunately, the ambulance response time in Malaysia ranges from around 15.2 min to 25.6 min depending on the location and traffic congestion (Hisamuddin et al, 2007)• Therefore, public members play a crucial role in starting bystander CPR prior to the arrival of ambulances.• Unfortunately, in a recent small study, bystander CPR was performed in 9% of OHA non-traumatic adult cardiac arrest cases (Chew et al, 2008). 9

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Types of Pre-hospital Care Models• According to VanRooyen et al (1999), prehospital systems can be divided into five different types of system models. These five models are1. Hospital-based systems2. Jurisdiction-directed systems3. Private systems4. Volunteer systems5. Complex systems 10

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Five Types of Prehospital Care SystemModels (1)System DescriptionModelHospital- In this system, the EMS personnel are trainedbased and managed at the hospital level. This systemsystem is usually the easiest to initiate and maintain as medical control issues are less complicated and can be incorporated into the existing hospital system seamlessly. This type of system is commonly seen in newly developed systems.Jurisdiction- This system originates from the municipal ordirected district level, and maybe linked to the firesystem response with contracted physicians providing medical oversight. 11

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Five Types of Prehospital Care SystemModels (2)System DescriptionModelPrivate This system, as the name goes, is maintained bysystem private organisations.Volunteer This system is formed by a network ofsystem volunteers who are privately trained.Complex This system is a combination of any of the abovesystem system types and evolve secondary to resource limitation as well as the need for shared resources. (Adapted from VanRooyen et al 1999) 12

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Pre-hospital Care in Malaysia: A ComplexSystem (1)• Based on this classification, prehospital care in Malaysia can be considered as a complex system with the hospital-based system as the oldest and main service provider.• Most of these hospital-based EMS services are provided by the public or government hospitals.• The Civil Defence Department is the second largest agency, providing 24-hour of prehospital coverage in most urban areas of every state in Malaysia. 13

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Pre-hospital Care in Malaysia: A ComplexSystem (2)• Private systems do play a minor role, but these are usually paid services provided by private medical centres.• Jurisdiction-directed system is rudimentary in Malaysia, provided mostly by the police and fire department personnel• The police and fire personnel not legally bound to provide medical care; mainly on rapid transportation with bare minimum first aid provision (scoop and run). 14

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Pre-hospital Care in Malaysia: A ComplexSystem (3)• Volunteer-based system, on the other hand, is a well-established system with the St. John Ambulance Malaysia and the Malaysian Red Crescent being the main key players.• This volunteer-based system, with their own training programmes and hardware (including vehicles) often serves as a reliable extension arm to complement services by the hospital-based system. 15

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Is Technology-Driven System The Answer?• Therefore, the technology-intensive model of prehospital care may not always the most appropriate and with its relatively high cost budget, this is beyond the capability of most developing countries.• Furthermore, high technology does not always translate into high-quality care (Garfield and Rodriguez 1985). 17

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Pre-hospital care must exist within a country’s cultural and geopolitical framework and the boundary of itssupporting health care infrastructure (Sikka and Margolis 2005) 18

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Is Technology-Driven System The Answer?• It is imperative to have in-depth study and to understand the current level of infrastructure development and healthcare facilities in a country before embarking on the development of EMS.• Not only a great disparity exists in terms of the level of EMS development from country to country; even within a nation itself, the level of EMS development differs from one locality with another. 19

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The Situation in Malaysia• In Malaysia, a whole gamut of different EMS services exists, ranging from• providing basic transportation (“scoop and run”) only to• providing first aid or basic life support care• up to offering advanced care with the presence of trained healthcare providers. 20

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The Situation in Malaysia• In the interior parts of Sabah and Sarawak states, accessibility of health care is extremely limited, and sometimes impossible especially at night and during bad weather.• In areas like these, developing critical infrastructure for initial resuscitation and stabilization as well as efficient and effective retrieval medicine may be the way forward. 21

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Flying Doctor Services• In Sarawak, one of the ways to overcome this logistic difficulty is the use of the “Flying Doctor Services” (FDS), introduced in 1973. 23

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Flying Doctor Services• The aim of this service is to provide basic health services to people living in remote areas.• At that time, this service was operated by utilising three private helicopters that were rented on a contractual basis.• This service covers up to 141 remote locations in rural parts of Sarawak with about 70,000 outpatients, children and antenatal cases every year. 24

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Flying Doctor Services• This FDS team comprises of a medical officer, a medical assistant and two community nurses who visit the locations once every one or two months.• Besides, the FDS also provides medical emergency evacuation (MEDEVAC) of seriously ill or injured patients from these remote localities to the nearest appropriate hospitals (Sarawak Government Portal, June 2011). 25

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Flying Doctor Services• At the current moment, the air medical services in Sarawak has been expanded to five helicopters; with the MEDEVAC services having two specific twin-engine helicopter on standby at all time and another three helicopters for uninterrupted FDS services 26

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The Importance of Developing Other Chainof Resources• Prehospital care is only one part of a chain of integrated resources.• For a healthcare system to improve, other components of this chain of resources must be developed in tandem as well (e.g. public education including BLS skills, access to care, staff training, equipment, etc)• By merely developing prehospital care without developing these other components may result in paradoxical fragmentation and wastages 27

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Components of EMS Care• VanRooyen et al (1999) outlined 15 essential EMS components (see next slide).• Out of these 15 components, seven components that should be implemented at the initial stage with gradual implementation of the other eight components as the system matures. 29

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Manpower• At the current moment, the prehospital care in Malaysia is usually manned by the paramedics and a driver; and occasionally but not necessarily, together with a medical doctor.• The staffs that are involved in EMS have different level of knowledge, skills and competency.• This can result in inconsistency of care, non adherence to standard management protocol and inter-facility transfer policy. 32

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Training• There is no standardised certification for prehospital care providers within Malaysia.• The paramedics that are staffing the ambulances have formal training in general para-medical sciences but not necessarily trained in prehospital care (Hisamuddin et al 2007).• Most of the time, the driver has no formal medical training and neither is he a specifically trained to handle ambulances or EMS vehicles. 33

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Training• Up to date, there is no specific national paramedic training institute yet. Although few private institutions have started their own paramedic training programs, their curriculum is not a standardized curriculum. 34

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Communication• In July 2007, the Malaysian government has introduced the “One Nation, One Number” system of universal emergency number „999‟ for all types of emergencies, regardless of whether it is health- related or non-health related (Chew et al 2008).• This has made it easier for the public to activate the EMS as people do not need to remember too many numbers as they previously did – „991‟ for Civil Defence Department, „994‟ for Fire and Rescue and „999‟ for police. 35

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Communication• Prank calls are still a problem in more than 90% of the emergency number usage (Chew et al 2008) despite the active public awareness campaign that making prank calls is an offence punishable to a maximum fine of RM50,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or both under section 233 of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission 2011). 36

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Communication• Another problem that we face is the lack of uniformed EMS communication between different agencies. Each individual agency is relying on their own communication system of call-receiving and dispatching of EMS teams (Hisamuddin et al 2007).• This can potentially result in incoordination, inappropriate transfer, overlapping and wastage of resources. 37

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Communication• Realising this difficulty, the Malaysian government has recently introduced the “Government Integrated Radio Network” (GIRN) since last year.• Basically GIRN is an attempt to close this inter- agencies communication gap between the fire department, the police, the EMS and other public safety agencies.• However, the main limiting factor of GIRN is its restricted coverage to certain densely populated areas only. 38

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Transportation and Facilities• There are few types of land ambulances in Malaysia.• The high-end types (Grade A or A1) are available in larger cities and, Grade B are available in district hospitals or rural health centres. 39

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Access to Care• Since the 1970s, the Ministry of Health Malaysia has taken steps to establish an extensive network of health care services in the country.• Currently a total of 97% of the rural population have access to healthcare services within a 3-km radius from their residence and• in East Malaysia, more than 50% of rural folks have access to health care services within a 5-km radius (Krishnaswamy et al 2009) 41

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Access to Care• In areas such as the interior parts of Sarawak, health care services are limited.• In such cases, the concept of self-care and community active participation is vital.• The Sarawak state government, for example has started training community health volunteers under the Village Health Promoter (VHP) Programme to supplement the existing healthcare services provided by the government (Sarawak Government Portal 2011). 42

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Coordinated Patient Record-keeping• There is no single coordinated patient record- keeping system in Malaysia.• Not only that the patient‟s record notes in private medical centres differ from that in government healthcare centres, but even within government healthcare services itself, patient record system differs from centre to centre. 43

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Coordinated Patient Record-keeping• In remote areas where it is difficult to retrieve the previous and concurrent treatment given in another centre, this can pose considerable diagnostic and therapeutic problems. 44

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Coordinated Patient Record-keeping• A unique feature in the Sarawak state is the use of „home-based‟ medical records.• This system was introduced in the 1970s initially for the child health records (including immunisation records), and then it was extended in the 1980s for antenatal records and since 1992, it has been extended for the entire outpatient medical cases. 45

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Coordinated Patient Record-keeping• The main advantage of this system is that it ensures a seamless continuum of care for the patient as the patient themselves hold a copy of all treatment given in any government centres in the state of Sarawak (Sarawak Government Portal 2011). 46

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Coordinated Patient Record-keeping• Unfortunately, over the recent years, a few medico- legal issues have cropped up, posing huge challenges to this „home based‟ medical records system. This has prompted the government to look into using digital system as the way forward. 47

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Other Issues at the moment• No legal provision safeguarding the interest of EMS team and driver• No “Good Samaritan Law”• There is no Ambulance Act yet in Malaysia, a law common in many countries to set the benchmark for the emergency services. 48

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Conclusion• In summary, although prehospital care services in Malaysia have improved considerably, there is still much room for further improvement.• Because of the varied socio-cultural and geographical differences in different parts of Malaysia, there is no “one-size-fit-all” system for the entire prehospital care development. 49

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Conclusion• In fact, any measure considered for the development of prehospital care in Malaysia should ensure its continuity and sustainability and not just a mere “stop-gap” measure. 50